Parallel Lines
by Sarah LoTuS
Summary: Parallel lines move so fast toward the same point; infinity is as near as it is far. A series of introspections as Bill and Lee deal with the loss of Kara in the maelstrom.


_**AN: I am still working on Schisms, I promise! I wrote this for a fic exchange and just got around to posting it.**_

* * *

~ Kara was family. You do whatever you have to do. Sometimes you break the rules. ~

Admiral William Adama feels all seventy two of his years and then some. Five years ago he buried his youngest son and today he has lost the woman Zak loved. Kara. His daughter. Not a daughter of his body but a daughter nonetheless.

No man should outlive his children, he thinks.

Kara's personnel file is open in front of him. He flips through various citations and disciplinary actions until he encounters a forgotten treasure.

He remembers the occasion with fondness. Lee was no longer speaking to him and he was long divorced from Carolanne. He therefore expected the occasion of his sixty-eighth birthday to pass with no more comment than perhaps a terse acknowledgement from Saul. He thought it was probably for the best.

Starbuck, however, somehow discovered the significance of the date. She appeared at his hatch just after her watch finished, presented him with a box of his favourite Picon cigars and wished him a happy birthday.

Taken aback, he invited her in for a glass of ambrosia and one of their chats.

_"I was not a good father, Starbuck," he confessed, after the alcohol had loosened his tongue somewhat. "I can't blame Lee for hating me."_

"_My dad ran out on us when I was seven," Kara replied. "He never came back. I got a few postcards a year until I was nine and then even that stopped. Lee doesn't know how lucky he is," she added fiercely._

_Bill didn't reply but instead drained the rest of his glass, sat back and sighed._

"_He'll come around," Kara assured him. "And if he doesn't I'll kick his frakkin' ass." She paused, remembering who she was speaking to. "Sir," she added belatedly._

_He was surprised by her vehemence and burst out laughing. After a moment, she joined in and the sombre air in the room was lifted, if only for a moment._

"_Thank you, Kara," Bill told her sincerely._

_She smiled and raised her glass in salute._

Bill supposes that day was when he began to truly consider Kara his daughter.

The next year when he turned sixty-nine and Lee was still angry she sneaked into his quarters (Bill still doesn't know how she managed that) and left this card propped up on his desk.

"Yeah," he mutters to himself, swallowing past the aching lump in his throat, "I see the resemblance."

* * *

_~ You're a raving lunatic, as demented and deranged as the first day I met you. ~_

Lee's determined to hold himself together in true Starbuck style. She wouldn't want him mourn her, he knows, so he ignores the sympathetic looks of the deck crew as he completes his post flight. Chief takes the clipboard and seems to know better than to comment.

He makes it to the showers before he breaks down in tears.

A small indulgence, he decides afterwards—from now on it will be business as usual.

He rummages in his old locker and digs out a photograph of her that he'd long ago hidden away, tucked behind the shelving at the back where nobody would find it. He stares at it for several moments before tucking it into his pocket and searching out the memorial wall. When he gets there though, he can't bring himself to pin it up. He promised he'd do this for her. Her last wish.

But once that wish is fulfilled, he'll have to accept that she's gone. He's not ready.

Racetrack approaches him, the look on her face apologetic. And for the first time today he remembers Sam. Sam who had once been a bitter rival but is now possibly the only person who can understand how he's feeling right now. And vice versa. Sometimes loss brings people together.

"She's still alive right?" Sam begs, drunken eyes blinking up at him from the floor of the hangar deck.

"No, Sam," Lee corrects. "She's gone. She's gone."

And he hates himself for saying it aloud.

* * *

_~ If it were you, we'd never leave. ~_

Laura calls. After the bombing on the hangar deck, Gaius frakking Baltar is short a lawyer. She's found a replacement but she wants him to assign someone to protect him in case their bomber decides to strike again.

Bill thinks about his son. Lee hasn't spoken a word to him since he returned and Bill expects he has also found somewhere private to mourn. Lee loved Kara too, he thinks with a touch of jealousy.

He remembers the horrifying moment after Kara's transponder blinked out and he thought Lee would follow her.

First Zak, now Kara. He still has Lee, but for how long?

He picks up the phone and instructs his XO to summon Lee to his quarters. Bill has not been a very good father but he would sell the entire fleet to the Cylons to keep Lee safe. And he would feel a lot better if his son was not in a Viper for a while.

* * *

_~ Physically fit but an emotional wreck. In peacetime, he'd ground us all. ~_

Her empty chair gapes at him as he addresses the briefing room full of pilots. He confuses the pickets and Helo casually corrects him. And then when Racetrack makes a sarcastic comment about the shuttle runs, he calls her Starbuck and the silence in the room is sharp as a twisting knife in his gut.

He apologises but he can't stand their eyes on him anymore. He dismisses them.

* * *

_~ Do your job. And walk out of this cabin while you still can. ~_

When Chief Tyrol reports the latest attempted bombing on his flight deck, Bill throws a glass across the room.

One thing. _One thing_ he asked of Lee. Don't fly. And not only did his son ignore the spirit of that request while adhering strictly to the letter of it...

His thought trails off to a single awful truth. He might've lost Lee, too.

That is unacceptable.

It's been two weeks. He might not have even realised the milestone had Lee not brought it up. They're at each other's throats, arguing over who loved Kara more and amidst all the bitterness Bill can't help but think how strange it is that such a loss can tear people apart.

Lee loved Kara. But Lee has no idea what it's like to lose a child. Bill hopes he never does.

* * *

_~ I guess that's all we'll ever be now, huh? ~_

Lee finally manages to get away from Romo and retire to his quarters. He just needs the world to back the frak off for a few hours, he decides. He can get through this if they just stop pestering him.

Dee's sitting at the table, flicking through some paperwork from CIC. She looks up as he enters; warm brown eyes full of sympathy. "Hey," she greets him with a weak smile. "Are you okay?"

It makes him a little angry. Dee never even liked Kara (He supposed they might have been friends of a sort, once. Before the apocalypse and New Caprica and him.) He shrugs off her concern. "I'm fine, Dee. Leave it alone, would you?"

"I'm worried about you, Lee," she insists. "I know you loved her." The latter comes out as a whisper, as if it was hard for her to say. He supposes it must be but he can't find it in himself to feel sorry for it.

He's made the wrong choice over and over again and now Kara's gone.

"You don't know anything about Kara so don't pretend you do," he says harshly.

"I never said I did," she tries again. "But I do know _you_, Lee. I know you're hurting and I want to make it better for you."

Everything bubbles up out of him; a torrent of bitterness aimed at his long-suffering wife. "I said I don't want to talk about it, okay? I don't know why you and my father and everybody else thinks I'm about to fly my Viper into an asteroid or something. I don't need to be tiptoed around and I don't want to _talk_, understand?"

Dee's mouth tightens to a thin line and she takes a single calming breath. "Frak you, Lee."

Lee allows himself to feel a small amount of shame at his outburst before he turns on his heel and leaves her in their quarters.

* * *

_~ What do you hear? Nothing but the rain. ~_

Admiral Adama is missing a button on his uniform jacket. He thinks it was there this morning but he isn't sure.

He should probably grab a new jacket from his locker and put that on instead but what does it matter anyway? All these years he's polished his buttons and pressed his uniform like a good soldier. He's stood to attention in front of superiors (none of those left now) and polished his boots until they were shiny enough to see his own face.

None of it seems worthwhile anymore. Being a good soldier did not save his marriage. It didn't make him a good father either. Zak died trying to live up to that impossible ideal and Lee rebelled against it. And Kara...

Kara was a good soldier, too.

* * *

_~ It's not a pyramid game, you don't get do-overs. ~_

"What'll it be?"

"Ambrosia. Make it a double." Joe looks at him with sympathy. Is there nobody on this damned ship who doesn't think he needs to be tiptoed around? Lee glares back and Joe shrugs his shoulders and pours the drink.

He takes a mouthful and swallows. And another. Unbidden, his eyes fall upon the table where she sat doing shots with Sam the night he'd decided to give his marriage another try. He almost sees the look she gave him when their eyes met and quickly darted away, guilty. He finishes the glass and orders another of the same.

He drinks to lost love. Wasted chances.

He thinks about one glorious night when he still had hope. Drunken optimism under a star-filled New Caprican sky. He knew then that if he ever lost her he'd die.

But of course he didn't. Not the next morning when she cut herself off from him completely by marrying Sam. Not later, when he realised that they'd trapped themselves with the few ethical standards they had left. And not even when he watched her viper shatter into a thousand pieces.

Lee didn't die when he lost her. It only feels that way.

* * *

_~ Aurora, __goddess__ of the dawn. She brings the morning star and a fair wind. ~_

Bill returns his phone to its hook and sits down heavily in his chair. Kelly. A man who served faithfully since the beginning of this journey, and before. His record was exemplary.

Every man has his breaking point.

Kara's file is still sitting on his desk. Bill lays his hand on it for a moment, palm down, remembering. He asks the Lords of Kobol to keep her close, even though he hasn't believed in them since he was a small child. Kara believed and that's reason enough.

Then he picks up the folder and carefully puts it away.

* * *

_~ Lee, I'm not afraid anymore. It's okay, just let me go. ~_

Lee steps out of his father's (no longer his commander's) office and shuts the hatch. His dad isn't happy with him right now but for the first time in a long while he feels free. The Admiral doesn't understand—Lee just can't fly anymore. It used to be he could always find Kara out there, even when their personal lives were frakked beyond repair. But now it's just so much empty space.

He's beginning the third stage of his life. Funny how he thinks of his life in reference to Kara; the dark ages of his childhood and adolescence before he met her, followed by a sort of enlightenment that began the moment she opened her apartment door to him.

Now she's gone. Even though he's no longer a pilot Lee thinks maybe he'll be seeing her again soon in any case. Maybe they all will. In the meantime there are still injustices to be fought and Lee doesn't have it in him to give up.

It's time. He reaches inside his pocket for the photograph, looks at it one last time while it still belongs to him and pins it carefully onto the board beside Kat.

Now she belongs to the universe.

_~ My name is Lee Adama and I love Kara Thrace. ~_


End file.
